Frostbite

Artists, Rebels, and Berliners in Frontline West Berlin

Axel Benzmann

Mass student protests, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, young people running with flags, their mouths in motion, their eyes laughing: a world caught in a whirlwind of change. Juxtaposed: masses of people pressed against the cordon, older Berliners, tense facial expressions, posters demanding the SDS(Socialist German Student Association) be made illegal, a brawl with APO (extra-parliamentary opposition) demonstrators – these are pictures Axel Benzmann took as a freelance press photographer in the 1960s.
In between are portraits of artists and bohemians of the Kreuzberg and West Berlin pub scene. This is where Benzmann moved in a more private way, deeply involved, observing. Kurt Mühlenhaupt, Günter Grass, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, Oskar Huth and others were anti-establishment. They exercised their artistic freedom and independence to oppose the powers of massive political influence exerted on art from both sides of the Iron Curtain. As a documentary photographer who sympathised with ideals of the 1968 activist generation, Benzmann was familiar with this position. His images reflect the enormous energy of political confrontation and cultural contradictions at play in the frontline town of West Berlin in the 1960s.